


The Nature of Sacrifice (Regrettably, Not the Human Kind)

by Kantayra



Series: The Masters and Doctors in the Matrix [4]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: Afterlife, Earworm, Enemies to Lovers, Fluff, Gift Giving, Humor, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-03
Updated: 2020-03-03
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:16:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22916842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kantayra/pseuds/Kantayra
Summary: Wooing so many Doctors in the Matrix afterlife wasn’t easy, especially when one had an unfortunate propensity for cackling evilly, plotting nefariously, and occasionally killing the Doctor’s own incarnations and his pets. Fortunately for the Master, just one grand nefarious plot while cackling evilly and doing something genuinelynicefor the Doctor, was more than enough.
Relationships: Fifth Doctor/The Master (Ainley), Fourth Doctor/The Master (Ainley), Seventh Doctor/The Master (Ainley), Sixth Doctor/The Master (Ainley), The Doctor & The Doctor's TARDIS, The Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who), Third Doctor/The Master (Delgado)
Series: The Masters and Doctors in the Matrix [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1592659
Comments: 7
Kudos: 56





	The Nature of Sacrifice (Regrettably, Not the Human Kind)

**Author's Note:**

> I usually try to make stories in my series work as standalones, but this one might require a bit of explanation: All the Master's and Doctor's incarnations are in an afterlife in the Matrix. This story is closely tied in to the previous story in the series, which occurs both immediately before and after it (because timey-wimey).
> 
> Also, for logistical reasons, I had to pick a numbering scheme for the Masters, even though this is a hopeless mess in canon. What I went with is: Delgado and Ainley (and, for that matter, Pratt and Beevers and Roberts) are the same entity and the 13th incarnation. MacQueen from BF is the 14th.

The Master had a problem.

The Third Doctor, persistently oblivious to the Master’s problem, shifted closer to the Master in his sleep, burying his nose in the crook of the Master’s neck. His silver hair tickled the Master’s ear, and the Master patted it down and away, excessively fluffy mane that it was. The Doctor had also managed, somehow, to hog ninety percent of the mattress, all the blankets, and all the pillows. The Master was reasonably certain that the only reason _he_ was still allowed in the bed was because the Doctor’s sleeping brain had categorised the Master as one of his pilfered pillows. Needless to say, the Doctor snored quite loudly and obnoxiously (again, in the general vicinity of the Master’s ear).

Unfortunately, none of this was the Master’s problem.

The Master’s problem could be summed up by the Doctor’s occasional sleep mutterings. In between particularly stentorian snorts, the Doctor whispered snatches of nonsense into the Master’s clavicle: “…nefarious knave…” and “…up to no good…” and “…foil your insidious scheme…” Any mention of “foiling” or “thwarting” was generally accompanied by a suggestive roll of the Doctor’s hips into the Master’s side. Not that the Master _minded_ a nice thwarting in the backside from time to time. In fact, given his particular frustration with this Doctor during their lifetimes, the posthumous sex was an unexpected boon.

However, the Doctor’s attitude toward their little liaisons did highlight that there was still a woeful imbalance of power between them. The Master would have (and had) burned entire civilisations for the Doctor, pursued the Doctor to the ends of the universe, and abased himself on his knees for so much as a snippet of the Doctor’s affection. The Doctor, in turn, had flitted about with Earth girls and sounded downright _disdainful_ upon learning of any particularly clever diabolical trap the Master had spent months elaborately and lovingly concocting before laying out at the Doctor’s feet.

It was quite the dilemma. And, ironically, this Doctor was the best of them. Apparently all those years he’d spent laying groundwork while the Doctor had been stranded at UNIT had actually done _something_ , if only to stoke a mutual shared passion within his Doctor. The others…

Well, the others were even more suspicious. Either that, or not so sexually frustrated that it outweighed their suspicions.

With a sigh, the Master slipped from his beloved’s arms. The Doctor grunted with annoyance, mumbled, “Where are you off to now?” and was forced to content himself with merely the entirety of their bedding.

“Off,” the Master answered anyway, “to do no good.” He sealed his promise with a kiss to his Doctor’s forehead.

***

Of the Master’s remaining Doctors, the Fifth Doctor was the most advantageous in that he had a somewhat affable demeanour and he’d spent the most time in the Master’s company.

Those were also both, as it turned out, _dis_ advantages to approaching the Fifth Doctor.

“Oh, what do you want?” the Fifth Doctor demanded when the Master, naturally enough, entered the door with a stalk of celery upon it.

The Master paused, took a moment to restrain the very nasty retort he wanted to make in response, and shut the door firmly behind him. Tremas’ visage slid smoothly over him, almost as comfortable to him after so many years as his natural body.

“What?” the Fifth Doctor finally looked up at the sound of the door closing, from where he’d been bent over a microscope and what looked like some sort of quantum circuitry boards. “What are you up to?” he asked warily, eyeing the Master and the door, as if expecting some sort of lethal attack.

The Master sighed wearily. “Need I remind you that physical altercations have no consequences in this Rassilon-forsaken hellhole?”

“No physical harm,” the Doctor corrected, “is not the same thing as no consequences.”

That was fair enough. There were certain Masters and certain Doctors that were skittish around each other due to past/present/future confrontations in the Matrix. There were certain _other_ Masters and Doctors who used it as foreplay. However, the Master was not particularly one of those.

“I assure you I mean you no harm.” The Master held out his hands in a manner he hoped was placating. “I merely wish to talk. See if we can’t come to some sort of _accord_?” When the Master had been mentally rehearsing this encounter beforehand, he’d reminded himself time and time again not to ogle the Doctor’s arse at that point. He ogled the Doctor’s arse anyway; it really was impossible not to do.

The Doctor’s eyes widened in alarm, and he took a wary step back.

“I assure you,” the Master continued to coo in his most hypnotic voice, “I have nothing but the highest regard for you and your…” A bit more leering might have sneaked in just there but, with herculean effort, the Master forced it back. “I desire only to please you.”

The Doctor snorted—“Since when?”—and seemed to take that as his cue to make a dashing and heroic escape. He spun on his heel in a needlessly athletic gesture to dodge around the Master’s outstretched hand before bolting out the door to freedom.

The Master really should have known better.

No Doctor, in the history of the entire universe, had ever wanted to ‘talk’. Pontificate? Absolutely. But talk? Ha!

***

The Master had mixed feelings about the Fourth Doctor. On the one hand, there was the delicious knowledge that this Doctor’s life had been _his_. On the other, this Doctor had always looked at him rather like he was something particularly nasty that had just been found upon the bottom of his shoe. It was hardly flattering.

At least the Fourth Doctor didn’t prefer the Master’s decayed form. That would have been truly unbearable: a deal-breaker, so to speak. It probably didn’t say much that the murdered body of the Doctor’s friend was preferable. But beggars, choosers, and all that.

“I come in peace,” the Master insisted.

The Doctor’s eyes instantly narrowed suspiciously.

The Master let out a sigh of exasperation. “Oh, come now, we’re both dead. What can you possibly think I’ve schemed up?”

“I have full faith in your ability to scheme in even the direst of circumstances,” the Doctor insisted and returned to…

Actually, the Master was half-convinced the Doctor was making some sort of sonic yoyo. He really shouldn’t have been surprised after all these years: the Doctors _were_ thoroughly ridiculous, despite also being brilliantly resourceful. Still, it never ceased to amaze him, the bizarre contortions their brain worked itself into.

“Perhaps I’ve turned over a new leaf,” the Master countered, and experimentally reached out to brush some imagined lint off the Doctor’s shoulder.

The Doctor jumped back as if he’d been scalded. “Haven’t you done enough?” he snapped. “Go torment someone else for a while. I’m busy.” He let the yoyo (because that really, _really_ was what it looked like) drop, and deflated somewhat when it just spun uselessly at the bottom of the string, refusing to rise again even when he gave the string hopeful little tugs.

There were possibly more ignominious ways of being dismissed, although the Master was hard-pressed to think of one.

***

That left the Sixth and the Seventh Doctors, of which the Seventh Doctor was marginally less cantankerous. But only marginally.

“Your plot is doomed to failure,” the Seventh Doctor informed him.

“What plot, pray tell, is that?” the Master demanded.

The Seventh Doctor waved a hand in the air dismissively and took another careful sip of his tea. “It hardly matters. I’ve anticipated the twenty-three most likely broad swaths of attack and set up countermeasures at strategic intervals throughout this room. In the event of the less likely hundred-or-so alternatives, I’ve programmed a recursive algorithm into the Matrix’s local subroutine to roll back both time and our relative perception thereof, thus negating even the unlikeliest mode of assault.”

The Master looked him squarely in the eye and couldn’t resist saying, bluntly, “I love you.”

The Doctor’s eyes widened, and then the damn algorithm ran and erased everything that had just happened, booting the Master right back out into the corridor in the process.

Apparently, that was one of the hundred-or-so rare alternatives.

Good to know.

***

It did, however, give a means of attack on the _Sixth_ Doctor, with whom going in yelling was generally the wisest approach.

“The sheer preposterous gall!” the Sixth Doctor blustered about, shaking his head sadly. “As if your mendacity were not renowned the universe over!”

“I’m trying to tell you the truth!” the Master exclaimed, with increasing irritation.

“Then you’re doing a terrible job of it. Appalling, really. Even for you.”

“What more do you want?” the Master hissed. “Am I supposed to _grovel_? Beg and plead, like one of your little pets? ‘Oh Doctor, please make me your companion! Love me back!’” He sneered. He couldn’t help it; Tremas really had had the best face for sneering, and the idiot hadn’t even used it properly.

“I _want_ ,” the Doctor insisted, “for you to abandon this absurd charade and leave me in peace in my afterlife, as you seemed compulsively incapable of doing in life.”

“And my affections matter so little to you? Even after having endured lifetimes of your hypocritical moralising?”

The Doctor shook his head condescendingly, his ridiculous mop of curls jiggling from side-to-side as he did so. “Love? _Love_? You,” he said scathingly, “wouldn’t know what love is, if your lives depended on it.”

***

The Master had once, on a lark, asked himself for advice on that very topic. Specifically: “What is love?”

His past incarnations, who had spent most of their lives on Gallifrey, had looked at him like he was going senile in his dotage.

His future incarnations, who had spent what was obviously far too much time on Earth, had inevitably responded with: “Baby, don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me, no more!” Often accompanied by bizarre dance moves.

It had taken the Master a while to track down the reference in the Matrix databases, upon which he was well and thoroughly earwormed.

In short, he hated himself.

***

That left the Master back in his original body, returned to bed with the Third Doctor. At least the Third Doctor was always eager for an extended bout of recreational banter, no matter what the subject.

“They’re quite right, you know,” the Doctor was explaining in his most insufferable tone, in between pressing rather lovely kisses up the Master’s wrist. “Love is an act of devotion, of self-sacrifice.”

“I’ve _sacrificed_ more than enough of my lives to your infernal whims.” The Master may have been having a bad afterlife and was not at all in the mood to be seduced, even when the Doctor was doing such an excellent job of it.

The Doctor gave him that _look_ , like the Master was being trite on purpose.

“You don’t believe me,” the Master said with a hint of despair. “Is there nothing I can do to convince you?”

For all their differences, the Master and this Doctor did have a truce of sorts, maybe even the beginnings of a rapport. The Doctor shrugged slightly in apology and brushed his lips against the inside of the Master’s elbow, just once. “I do believe,” the Doctor began almost cautiously, “that you have put a great deal of investment into me, over the course of your lives. Of course you have. Something of an obsession, really. But that’s all it is, you see. You’re suited to mind games and power plays, schemes and tricks and traps, and I indulge you because I find the counter-play equally satisfying. But,” the Doctor’s tone turned especially gentle, which was how the Master knew that his words would genuinely hurt, “that isn’t love. When have you ever done anything, at a cost to yourself, for my benefit? In what circumstance _would_ you ever?”

And, oh, did the truth of that sting.

“None, I think,” the Doctor stated the obvious matter-of-factly. “It’s all self-interest on your part. So, let us call it what it is: an alignment. The two of us are well aligned in our needs and wants, and there is no shame in that. Let us take pleasure in what chance we have been given.” He caught the Master about the waist, his hands and body guiding the Master to lower himself onto his back.

The Master resisted for one moment, at which a hint of delight shone through the Doctor’s smile with a surprisingly wicked edge. Then the Master, as always, yielded.

The Doctor was gentler and more thorough than usual that night, but _he_ still got everything _he_ wanted.

The Master had his answer from the Doctor. From all of him. Unequivocally, and with no means of retort.

***

His plan of revenge didn’t form until the morning after.

The Third Doctor was in the sort of mood where he wanted to prove how much smarter he was than everyone else, but the Master finally succeeded in divesting himself of the relentless sermonising by deliberately running him up against the _Seventh_ Doctor. (Now, _there_ was a plan of attack the labyrinthine braggart hadn’t thought of!) Possibly, the two of them would lecture themselves to re-death.

The Master had other concerns at the moment.

The internal workings of the Matrix could be quite finicky. There were weak points in the Matrix’s partitions, of course, most particularly along the fault where the Doctor had cobbled together the passage between his and the Master’s mind.

The War Master gave him a knowing look but agreed to play look-out for him, while the Master carried out the initial stage of his plan.

It took time.

Denizens of the Matrix were meant to stay locked up in their own data storage and only provide their knowledge when the High Council ordered, like good little Time Lords. Fortunately, the Master had always prided himself on being the absolute worst Time Lord he could be. The ingenuity that came with being Gallifrey’s most infamous renegade (well, possibly second, depending on how favourably the High Council viewed the Doctor these days) also applied to stealing one’s way out of the Matrix data clusters, it turned out.

The Master took one look back to where the War Master seemed to be idly toying with a data pad. The War Master looked up and rubbed his thumb and forefinger together in the universal gesture of payment expected. With a weary sigh at himself, the Master acceded with a nod.

Then, the Master turned to the schism he’d rent in the skin of the Matrix. It pulsed with an ominous red light, a warning that this system was not meant to be toyed with. The Master snorted – while alive, he’d made the Matrix his personal plaything long ago – and dove in, mind first.

Maintaining one’s identity through complete corporeal dissociation took a powerful psyche and an iron will. Most Time Lords would have dissolved into scattered bytes of data upon exiting their built-in Matrix habitations. The Master, of course, had spent centuries as a non-physical entity, holding himself together with telepathic duct tape and whatever temporal bodies he could snatch. It turned out to be excellent training for this venture, rather like an ocean free-diver who suddenly found himself faced with the very basic task of crossing the kiddie-pool; he didn’t even really have to ‘hold his breath’, so to speak.

The greater task was finding what he was looking for in the Matrix’s endless wasteland of information. Unlike a Time-Lord mind, which even the High Council couldn’t sneer down upon too much, the prize the Master sought would have been insignificant to the Matrix builders, an incidental afterthought that would be in no way packaged into one coherent whole.

The place to start was the source of the Doctor’s data stream. The Master found _that_ integration point easily enough; he’d had some fun in this life mucking about with the Doctor’s biodata, so he knew exactly where to look.

On the edges of his awareness, he detected the Matrix security algorithms trawling by. They were slow-moving bots, scouring the circuit pathways systematically for rogue code to obliterate, big and dumb and plodding (much like the minds that had built them). Deadly to the touch but, with a wide enough telepathic awareness, easily avoidable.

The Master tracked their movement with one tendril of awareness, ready to dart out of their way if one came too close, and shot several more search tendrils into the input circuits for the Doctor’s Matrix encapsulation. Amidst the thousand Time-Lord capsules that stretched around him, as far as the mind could see, his own mind-casing was huddled up right next to the Doctor’s, abutting, cleaving together in the cold, clinical wasteland of an afterlife the Time Lords had chosen for themselves. The thought unexpectedly made the Master’s mind feel warm and rosy and a bit fuzzy around the edges. It made him slow to move out of the way of the first security bot whose route swept past him; fortunately, the bot was even slower, and the shave wasn’t even particularly close.

Still, best not to think about the Doctor for the duration of this mission. His feelings for the Doctor and rationality had never gone well together.

The data he was after was even more fragmented than he had feared. Tiny little snippets here and there that only happened to be preserved because the Time Lords were anal-retentive bastards and kept _everything_. Piecing together the fragments was a nightmare, like trying to restore the pages of a trillion-page document from the paper strips that had emerged from a shredder that had shredded a trillion other documents, as well.

There were very few times in the Master’s seemingly endless existence that had taxed his full mental capabilities: the assignments for that damned Advanced Temporal Geometry course, and withstanding the mental sheering forces within the Eye of Harmony, and the data-analysis for his black-body research during his apprenticeship. Gazing into the Doctor’s eyes back at the Academy, before they’d even been Doctor and Master, and trying to understand what was happening to him, why the axis of all time and reality had shifted so that he was now orbiting this one scrawny (at the time, at least) Time-Lord-to-be… In fact, he still wasn’t certain that he’d figured out that last one.

The task at hand took all his mental resources, but in a different way: it was infinite busy-work. Piecing puzzles together was a simple enough task in and of itself, but the scope of the project was massive, almost beyond calculation.

It also didn’t help that every few minutes a security bot trawled by, causing the Master to interrupt his task, often losing the bit of work he’d been in the middle of, and then making him wait until the coast was clear again.

It was frustrating, tiresome work, and the Master’s mental calculations of how long it would take were disheartening. Specifically, at the rate he was doing, and the bots were undoing, the deed would never be done.

He needed another plan. He needed a better strategy. He needed to be faster, more efficient, but he was already taxing himself to the limit and he had no more to give and—

He felt a tap on his shoulder.

Well, not quite.

He didn’t have a body here, so he couldn’t feel and he didn’t have a shoulder. However, he detected telepathic contact that was intentionally designed to filter through his mind in such a way that it would mimic a tap on the shoulder, were he in his body. His own mind was adept enough that it recognised the stimulation and translated it accordingly.

For the sake of simplicity, given that the English language does not possess the proper conjugations or declensions found in Formal Citadel Gallifreyan to describe the phenomena involved easily, let us just say it that way henceforward, keeping in mind that the descriptions herein are entirely metaphorical: He felt a tap on his shoulder.

He turned and raised a surprised eyebrow to see his own Fourteenth incarnation.

“Need a little help?” The Fourteenth Master always had a diabolical light in his eye, enough to make anyone – especially the Master, who knew himself better than anyone else – wary.

“At what price?” the Master countered. The pair of them moved out of the way of the incoming security bot instinctively.

The Fourteenth Master grinned. “A share in the prize, of course.”

“Of course.” The Master rolled his eyes at himself. He might’ve known: The War Master had wanted in, for standing watch. And the War Master had undoubtedly told the Fourteenth Master, so now the Master needed to placate them both, if he wanted their continued cooperation (and, more importantly, to avoid their active sabotage). “You do realise that you are shaking yourself down?”

The Fourteenth Master laughed maniacally. “I love it! Don’t you?”

The Master couldn’t help but grudgingly agree. This was, however, why he didn’t usually ask himself for help. “Why do you even need it? I’ve seen you about, poaching _my_ Doctors. You looked cosy enough.”

“I could say that of you and your little harem,” the Fourteenth Master retorted. “And poaching? Please, darling. You met _six_ Doctors first. The least you can do is share the wealth with yourself.”

The Master’s eyes narrowed at the challenge. The Fourteenth Master looked equally eager to strike. They might have got into a bit of a territorial dispute over their overlapping Doctors then and there, had another security bot not passed to remind them of the matter at hand.

“I see,” the Master considered the useful information he’d just acquired and tried to ignore the Fourteenth Master’s brazen Doctor-theft, for the moment. It seemed that the two of them were operating in different time-streams: to each it seemed that they had yet to woo their own respective Doctors, but to the other the battle seemed already won. That was, at least, some reassurance that the plan would succeed.

They shared a long, measured look into each other’s minds.

Finally, the Master shrugged in acquiescence. “If you’ll divert the security bots?”

“My pleasure,” Fourteen agreed with a sharp glint of teeth.

Security bots, the Master had discovered during his past capers within the Matrix, could be diverted quite easily by telepathically restructuring the fabric of the Matrix such that, when one approached, the circuitry path suddenly made a little detour, causing the security bot to skirt around him, entirely oblivious. It was rather like switching train tracks using one’s mind.

Before, the Master hadn’t had the spare mental energy to do so, but with his Fourteenth moving the bots, he could now focus entirely upon his fragmented data puzzle. It sped everything up drastically.

However, when the Master took a break to recalculate the estimated time to completion, the answer was still infinite.

Then, slowly, the estimate changed. Ripples lapped at the edges of his consciousness, reshaping the reality around him. He felt his Twelfth incarnation, sly and superior, hovering at the far end of their puzzle. To his right, his Fifteenth self was digging in with sprightly enthusiasm, discarding unnecessary data with childish glee to restore the pretty picture they all sought. Masters from the past stretched out to one side, their focus ostensibly academic to begin with but becoming ever more passionate as the depths of their obsession with the Doctor deepened and purified. Masters from the future extended the other way, so far that the Master himself couldn’t even see where they ended, possibly into the infinite. These Masters were even more desperate than he had been, their crimes compounded again and again until it seemed like no atonement could ever be enough.

The Master sighed and said to them all, “I understand that, as a whole, we’re not given to cooperation. But perhaps we can avoid stabbing ourselves in the back long enough to accomplish this one task?”

Certain Masters looked more sheepish at this than others. It wasn’t too extremely difficult to guess which ones exactly.

The Master shuddered and recalculated again. With so many of him working the puzzle, he could now focus entirely on the larger picture. One mind on an infinite task completed the task in infinite time. With the way infinity worked, two minds was no better, nor ten, nor a billion. _Infinite_ minds, however, could accomplish an infinite task in finite time, at long last.

The puzzle started to take form.

It was still painstaking: a mind reconstructed from scraps, then a body (of sorts). Bits and pieces the Time Lords as a whole had never esteemed particularly, but the Doctor… Oh, to the _Doctor_ , this data recovery would mean _everything_.

Finally, with task complete, the Master stood before the very familiar sight. Extended hands nudged him, and he passed out the keys to the Doctor’s heart in just compensation for the work all of him had accomplished with himself. (He did debate stiffing himself just for a moment, but he could be very persistent and creative about harassing himself, and he didn’t need all that distraction for eternity.) One by one, the Masters vanished as they claimed their share, returning to the safety of their designated mindscape.

In the end, only the Master and his Fourteenth incarnation remained. The Master gave the Fourteenth his payment and then, when the Fourteenth’s hand remained out, gave him the War Master’s share as well. How the devil the War Master had prevented the Doctors from noticing that _every_ Master was gone was a complete mystery to him, and he would have to hear the tale someday. Hopefully it involved a lot of fellatio.

Fourteen vanished with a wink, leaving the Master alone with the ultimate prize.

He took a moment to collect himself, then dematerialised…

…And rematerialised directly in the centre of the atrium of the Doctor’s mindscape.

The Doctors’ reactions were everything he could have hoped for. Even the Fourth Doctor, who could be undecipherable and mercurial, and the Seventh Doctor, who liked to pretend that nothing could faze him, looked properly stunned.

The Master stepped up to the Fourth Doctor, smirked, and pressed up on the Doctor’s chin with one gloved index finger to snap the Doctor’s jaw closed. “I believe this belongs to you?” he said with well-deserved smugness, and slipped a TARDIS key into the Doctor’s hand.

The Fourth Doctor looked at the Master, looked down at where their hands were now linked together around the key, and then looked back over the Master’s shoulder at his beloved blue box.

Then he promptly seized the Master’s face between his palms and kissed him, hard and blunt.

The Master sighed with satisfaction and let himself melt into the Doctor’s kiss. Oh yes, this was _much_ more what he’d had in mind…

When the Fourth Doctor pulled away, he had a wild look in his eyes and the hint of a boyish smile that he was obviously trying to suppress but just wouldn’t go away. He looked at the Master like he’d never seen him before. “You’re mad,” he said in disbelief. “Completely mad.” A pause. “But you do mad so beautifully…”

The Master laughed and kissed this Doctor again, just to prove that he could. The Doctor fell into him cautiously but with increasing eagerness, so that the Master took the slightest risk and lowered one hand so that it rested squarely on the Doctor’s bum. After a quick startled gasp, it turned out that this Doctor’s bum was not out of bounds in the slightest. Exactly as it should be.

The Master let the Fourth Doctor pull away in his own time. Gangly about his own feet as ever, the Fourth Doctor gave him a smile that spoke promises of delights to come, and wandered in a bit of a daze to go stroke the side of his TARDIS lovingly.

The Fifth Doctor who, in the interlude, had apparently run right up to the box and hugged it, now stepped back to give the Fourth Doctor his moment.

They all watched as the Fourth Doctor inserted the key into the lock and stepped inside. A moment’s pause, and then the imprint of the Fourth Doctor’s TARDIS separated from the whole and dematerialised, leaving the collective TARDISes of the remaining Doctors.

“I can feel her,” the Fifth Doctor whispered in awe, looking a bit teary-eyed, “in here.” He pointed to his temple. “Just like when we were alive.”

“It took particular effort to restore her mind,” the Master agreed. “Time Lords, in general, place little value on storing an individual TARDIS’ mindscape.”

The Fifth Doctor looked at him happily. “She’s all there,” he assured him. “Can she…?”

The Master shrugged apologetically. “Not anymore. She’s within the Matrix now, too. The universe is beyond her reach. However, anywhere you ever want to go within the Matrix… That should be entirely possible.” What the Doctor would do with that was anyone’s guess. The Master had no doubt, however, that the Doctor would be _creative_ about it.

The Fifth Doctor raised his eyebrows at the Master hopefully.

The Master held up a single silver key in response, and leered just a little.

The Fifth Doctor rolled his eyes in such a way that it was quite obvious he was trying not to laugh, and stepped in close. “Thank you,” he said genuinely. “I can’t imagine why you did it, but thank you anyway.” He kissed the Master soundly once, quickly, blink and it was over.

“You know,” the Master said, handing him his key, “ _exactly_ why I did it.”

The Doctor’s eyed widened, and his expression turned abruptly sober. Then, slowly, his eyes went soft and dark and knowing, and he leaned in deliberately, giving the Master all the time he needed to savour the moment of being kissed _properly_ , fervently, from the bottom of the Doctor’s hearts.

Their arms wrapped around each other, the Master’s like a python encircling its prey, but the Doctor’s also surprisingly predatory. Possessive, even. The Doctor’s tongue slipped into the Master’s mouth on an unintended gasp, and the Master allowed it, partaking eagerly of the Doctor’s desire.

The Doctor finally broke away, gave him a cheeky wink and a playful slap on the bottom, and turned to take his TARDIS.

“Hmm,” the Seventh Doctor said when the Fifth dematerialised. He probably thought he was exceptionally clever, having sneaked up on the Master like that, but the Master always kept track of the Seventh Doctor out of the corner of his mind, just in case. “I don’t suppose you’d care to explain how this was even possible?” He studied the remaining TARDIS imprints assiduously, avoiding so much as looking at the Master. “The Time Lords would never bother to preserve the mind and body of a TARDIS, especially not an old, derelict Type-40.” The Doctor sounded particularly bitter when he said it, affronted at the slight to his eternal beloved.

“Of course not,” the Master agreed. “All she was ever good for, to them, was sending back Time-Lord biodata. Your own,” he nodded to the Seventh Doctor and then the Doctor’s atrium as a whole. “Occasionally even some of mine, by association.”

“Then where the deuce did you find _her_ biodata?” the Doctor demanded, looking up at him sharply and suddenly.

“Because, my dear Doctor, every time she sent your data back to the Matrix, every trip and adventure and memory she preserved, included just the tiniest bit of her, captured unintentionally in the metadata of the upload.”

The Doctor gulped, eyes wide at the realisation. “Junk data, worthless to the Time Lords…”

“But priceless to you, hmm?” the Master grinned down at him, quite enjoying the bragging rights of having finally come up with something clever that this Doctor had missed. “It took infinite uploads to capture every scrap of her biodata, but infinite uploads is what I had.”

The Doctor’s cheeks flushed slightly, and he looked hurriedly down again. “Yes, well…” he began sheepishly. “I suppose that was well enough done.”

“Well enough,” the Master said with superb sarcasm, and held up a single key before the Doctor’s face.

The Doctor looked at it mere inches away, a little cross-eyed, and then snatched it from the Master’s fingers peevishly. He accepted the exchange, however, and met the Master’s gaze again firmly, if not so confidently as he had perhaps intended.

The Master took a step forward, putting a fair bit of menace into it for old times’ sake.

The Doctor blushed full-out but, tellingly, removed his hat and held it nervously by his side, fingers fidgeting on the brim.

The Master took what was on offer, encoiling the Doctor with his embrace, capturing those so-superior lips with a savagery that surprised even him. Something dark and ancient in his hindbrain flared with satisfaction at finally having a Doctor that he could encompass fully, rather than the other way around.

The Doctor remained passive for only a moment (possibly that was all he could manage) before returning the Master’s kisses with a surprisingly feral passion. They clawed and clutched at each other as their tongues and teeth tangled. At some point, the Doctor even dropped his hat.

They both pulled away panting when the Master was finally done, the Doctor studying him closely with inscrutable, calculating eyes. For once, the Master thought he would quite enjoy the result of those calculations.

“Yes.” The Doctor stooped over to pick up his hat. “Well.” He brushed it off and put it back on. “I’ll just…” He gestured back to the TARDIS, then frowned as if genuinely perplexed why he was so reluctant to go.

The Master laughed, and said, “Enjoy!” magnanimously and with just enough innuendo to make the Doctor squirm a bit before reaffirming his decision.

He doffed his hat briefly in the Master’s direction, and went.

That left only…

“I still say you’re a contemptible villain, only out for your own perfidious good,” the Sixth Doctor said testily.

The Master turned his head to eye the Sixth Doctor lazily. He was feeling quite contented with himself at this moment. In this mindset, the Doctor’s insults were sweet music to his ears.

“Oh, don’t look so smug about it!” The Doctor threw up his hands in exasperation. “Give it here.” He held out his hand, so demanding and abrasive.

In some ways, the Master wanted this one under him more than all the others. He presented the Doctor with his key, giving him a gracious – if sarcastic – bow.

The Doctor looked even more flustered at this, and took the key only after a brief hesitation. “Well?” he finally demanded when the Master did nothing but look at him even more smugly than before.

“Well?” the Master repeated, eyebrow raised.

The Doctor edged back toward the door of his TARDIS. Around them, the atrium was filling now, as various other pairs of Doctors and Masters approached, each eager to take their own imprint of the TARDIS.

The Master watched as the Doctor’s back nudged the TARDIS door slightly ajar, but still the Master didn’t move.

The Doctor’s jaw twitched as if he were steeling himself up. “Aren’t you…?” he trailed off.

“Aren’t I what?” the Master chuckled at the Doctor’s predicament.

The Doctor’s eyes flashed attractively, and his irritation got the best of him, as usual. “Oh, you low-down blackguard! You’re going to make me say it, aren’t you?”

“Oh, yes,” the Master agreed fervently. “I just _adore_ it when you say such sweet things to me, you see.”

The Doctor’s face went red as a balloon, and he finally managed to blurt out. “Aren’t you going to come claim your reward from me, as well?”

“Yes,” the Master said, striding quickly up to the Doctor, pushing him through the door inside, back and back, until he was bent back awkwardly over the console, the Master fitted firmly between his spread legs. “ _Yes_ ,” the Master repeated, “don’t mind if I do.” And he kissed the Doctor breathless and helpless beneath him, as their little slice of the TARDIS dematerialised to the-Doctor-only-knew where.

More importantly, however, he was finally able to vanish that absolutely _atrocious_ coat the Doctor insisted on wearing. The rest of his kit, too, but the coat was really the important part, as the Master was sure everyone would agree.

***

The Master learnt some important things about the nature of sacrifice in the ensuing maelstrom.

To wit:

The Sixth Doctor was quite amenable to being taken against any and all uncomfortable surfaces, just so long as the Master did it absolutely _now_. The Sixth liked to insist that he preferred the Master rough and fast, but in reality what made him turn into an absolute gibbering mess in the Master’s clutches, was when the Master claimed him slow and deep, dragging wanton little exhales from the Doctor’s lips until even that bratty mouth of his was at a loss for words besides “yes” and “oh” and “please” and, if the Master was particularly lucky, “ _Master_!”

The Seventh Doctor had a surprising propensity for being taken from behind, on hands and knees. The Master covered him entirely that way, and it turned out that, for an expert strategist, being well and fully trapped was an incredible turn-on. This Doctor also had a tendency to bite and, if the Master ever wanted to make him come fast and hard and sloppy, biting him in return, just over the jugular, was the most surefire way. It seemed that a bit of the cheetah lingered in them both, and the Master was more than happy to indulge the Doctor during their mating.

The Fifth Doctor, on the other hand, needed a bed, sweet gestures, and a lot of preparation. Then, once the Master was moving reverently and languidly inside him, the Master was to whisper the most abject filth he could think of into the Doctor’s ear. Fortunately, the Master had spent a considerable chunk of his lives thinking up all sorts of wonderful filth about the Doctor, his proclivities, and what the Master would do to him once he finally had the Doctor within his power. The Doctor would squeeze his eyes shut throughout these recitations, clinging to the Master weakly, and come for him so beautifully that it took the Master’s breath away.

The Fourth Doctor was, perhaps, the oddest duck of all. The Fourth Doctor needed to be _surprised_ , spontaneous. Impromptu encounters where the Master shoved him into cupboards and the like were a must. Fortunately, the Matrix allowed the Master to spontaneously generate cupboards wherever and whenever was convenient. The first time the Master had succeeded in sneaking up behind the Doctor and snapping a pair of handcuffs around his wrists was most fulfilling. The time when he’d caught the Doctor in a blindfold and proceeded to inflict all sorts of pleasures on his helpless body, even more so.

The Third Doctor, of course, continued to want to pontificate endlessly.

What with all the Master had been up to, and the way time worked (or, more properly, _didn’t_ work) in the Matrix, the Master didn’t know how long it had actually been when he materialised the Third Doctor’s imprint of the TARDIS back in his room.

The Third Doctor was abed in the nude, waiting patiently for the Master, which tended to indicate that, for the Doctor, it hadn’t been long at all.

The Third Doctor also did a bit of satisfying gaping at his TARDIS and got a bit sentimental about “my old girl” until the Master kissed the tears off his cheeks.

The Master waited until the Doctor had calmed some, until he’d lovingly stroked his key and some rather pleasurable portions of the Master’s anatomy, as well. After all, this was a moment he’d been waiting his entire lifetimes for.

Then, once the Doctor was good and warm and snug against him, he finally took his revenge in the most satisfying means possible:

“Admit it,” he demanded of the Doctor, “you were _wrong_.”

The Doctor froze, tensed, and then opened one contrarian eye to glare at him. “What are you on about? I absolutely was not wrong.”

“You were _wrong_ about me,” the Master insisted, enjoying the Doctor’s fruitless little struggle, because that would make his ultimate victory that much sweeter.

“I can hardly see how you would arrive at _that_ conclusion,” the Doctor said sourly. “I was spot on, as far as I can see.”

“You said I couldn’t love you. You said it was merely an obsession. That I could never sacrifice myself solely for your sake. That I could never do anything to prove you wrong.” The Master clutched the hand in which the Doctor held his TARDIS key and brought it to his lips. “ _This_ proves you wrong.”

The Doctor made an unpleasant expression, obviously working his (frankly, devious) mind around the problem to find some way to weasel out of the Master’s inevitable conclusion. “I hardly think you were in any real danger,” he finally settled on. “I’m not sure it counts as a proper sacrifice.”

“I actually worked together with _myself_.” In truth, the fact that that had actually _succeeded_ still boggled his mind a little.

“And your motivations were clearly less than pure,” the Doctor went on, warming to their little debate now that his mind had had a moment to gather its arguments. “You… _benefited_ quite a bit personally from your little gift, from what I hear. Not to mention, doing something nice solely for the purpose of saying, ‘Told you so,’ is hardly in the spirit of the thing.”

“I gave you back the only woman I’ve ever had just cause to be jealous of,” the Master countered.

The Doctor pursed his lips. “No, I’m sorry, I just don’t see the risk to yourself there. The Time Lord/TARDIS relationship is entirely different from…” He trailed off the way he always did whenever he was about to say something really _interesting_ , heaven forbid.

“The risk, my love – and, yes, even the ultimate sacrifice – lies in the fact that you are now perfectly capable of hopping into that infernal machine, taking off to who knows where, and forgetting about me entirely. _Again_.” There might have been a hint of unintended bitterness, just at the end.

The Doctor’s eyes widened in horrified disbelief, and he clasped the Master’s naked body close, so that their breaths teased each other’s cheeks. “No, no,” he insisted. “If I’ve ever made you think that… I never intended…” He paused and finally found a way to say something without saying anything: “My dearest, you must know that that would never happen.” He pressed a quick, fervent kiss to the Master’s lips, as if desperate to impart what he was too persistently cowardly to ever say.

The Master hummed, mulled that over a bit, and finally nodded. He could be content in the knowledge that, for his mad Doctor, this _was_ love. “How could I ever have doubted?” he reassured with equal devotion.

A gentle, relieved smile crossed the Doctor’s face, and the Master cupped his cheek with one palm.

“But only,” the Master teased, rolling the Doctor onto his back, “if you admit you were wrong.”

The Doctor looked aghast up at him. “Never!” he protested valiantly.

The Master grinned and parted the Doctor’s legs with a firm nudge of his knee. “We’ll see what we can do to change your mind about that,” he threatened.

The Doctor’s eyelids fluttered half-closed. “Well,” he huffed, “you could always _try_ , I suppose. Do your worst.”

“I always do,” the Master promised, and did so.

**Author's Note:**

> A wild plot appeared. o.O No clue where that came from... Ah well. I'm running with it. :)
> 
> Also, I resisted explicitly using Big Finish references/characters for as long as I could...which turned out not to be very long at all. (It's all MacQueen's fault! I just can't resist his Master.) Ah well, I have some fun ahead of me trying to make all the BF stuff fit in with everything else, whee!


End file.
